Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Sal’s Battle Pets: What Pets to Use—PvP Edition

Unlike pet tamer quests and world hunting, the randomness of team composition is the beauty of PvP pet battles. You can never, ever know what you will be paired with. That said, if you are spamming battles, you may well see the same team over and over again and will be able to adjust your group accordingly. The only way to do that is to have pets of all families at your disposal. As hard as it sounds, I suggest getting your PvE team up to max level and then power leveling one of each family to 25. If you have been collecting in MoP content, you will have plenty of pets that are already at 22/23, so it won’t take long. If you want the fastest queues, having three similarly leveled pets on your team works best. Putting a low-level pet with two 25s can work, but not if you expect to get a lot of fights in.

Official numbers on what pet families are most popular in PvP aren’t available, so this is based solely on my own experience, and that of others I have polled. For whatever reason—maybe it’s because they are cool or maybe they seem a bit overpowered—mechanical pets were the first you were almost guaranteed to see when you queued up. Perhaps for the reasons stated in my PvE article, Dragonkin also became popular choices. Now that everyone has had a chance to get out there and collect, and maybe in response to all the mechanical pets, Elemental pets are dominating the choices. With all this in mind, my—by no means definitive—suggestion for a pet battle team includes Elemental, Aquatic and Humanoid.

Elemental

These guys pwn mechanical in a big, nasty way. They also have awesome abilities that are fun to watch. There are not a ton of these just hanging around in the world waiting for you to nab them, but if you are good have done your MoP tamer quests, you should have an elemental in your arsenal already. The Sinister Squashling is something you might have picked up last October, but can probably be found on the auction house if you didn't.

Aquatic

I have to admit to hating most Aquatic pets. That mostly has to do with them doing big damage to my original team whenever battling them on my way to 25. However, these guys are great when pitted against the inevitable Elementals you will see. Also, they usually have good heals. To get one of these, you can catch a high-level water-squirter in MoP fairly easily. I bought my Purple Puffer for five bucks from WoW TCG Loot, and there are tons of Frogs in low-level areas.

Humanoid

I bring in a Humanoid in response to the Dragonkin out there. Children’s Week is coming up soon, and if you haven’t already picked them up, the Curious Oracle Hatchling and Curious Wolvar Pup are rare-quality and waiting for you to adopt them. Hint: you can’t choose both, so do the quest chain on an alt as well.

Dragonkin (honorable mention)

I try to leave my Celestial Dragon at home, but I just can’t. She is way too powerful, and after using her step-by-step from level 1, I understand her quirks innately. Sure, Alludra says she eats Dragonkin for breakfast, but that heal has saved my team so many times, and that nasty 390+ attack that comes off cool down every three rounds is a force to be reckoned with.

Undead (honorable mention)

There are plenty of folks bringing in their Sporeling Sprout or Flayer Youngling Humanoid pets, mostly to show off that they have them, but perhaps to tackle the Dragonkin issue. Undead is what takes care of those bi-pedals for good. Their resurrection is great in a pinch and can nab you that win even when the rest of your team is laying motionless on the floor.

Another strategy could be to choose pets that no one at all is bringing in and throw off any strategy that was attempted to have been made by your opponent. You might be the only one at the party with a Critter, Beast and Flying… wait, no. That would be a terrible team.